Rose Empire

Chapter 15 The Beginning of the Journey

"Tsk, how desolate..."

Charlotte sighed as she looked at the castle before her.

This small castle was about the same size as the one Charlotte had purchased in Platinum City, perhaps even slightly smaller.

Due to lack of maintenance, the outer walls of the small castle were covered with moss, vines, mildew, and weathered patches, making it appear older than the Riverside Castle. The doors and windows, filled with spider webs and bird droppings, had been boarded up with wooden planks. This was somewhat good news, as it indicated that the interior of the small castle had not been exposed to much wind and rain over the years.

The external facilities of the small castle were nowhere near as complete as those of the Riverside Castle. Surrounding the small castle was just a wooden fence, within which one could see what had once been a garden. Similarly, due to years of neglect, the garden had long been reclaimed by nature, with weeds growing wildly and squeezing out the space for delicate flowers. Among the weeds, small wild animals could be seen peeking out.

Only a few surviving, withered roses in the corner could tell Charlotte that this place should not have been so desolate.

This castle was once the residence of the former Earl of Lanwan.

Basilik Melefield had sold it, and later Charlotte had secretly bought it back. The castle was remote and not large, so it was a miracle that Basilik had managed to sell it at all, and the price must not have been high. Charlotte spent even less to buy it back.

Presumably, the buyer of Basilik's castle had been attracted by the "Melefield" surname, only to find out after the purchase that Basilik's "Melefield" had long since split from the "Melefield" of the Green Plains Duchy and had little to do with it, leading to regret and a desire to offload it quickly.

Thus, the castle was sold cheaply to Charlotte's agent.

Gently brushing her fingertips over the top of a rose branch, Charlotte quickly dispelled the inexplicable melancholy that had arisen in her heart and turned to Knight Jack Moore, saying, "Knight Jack, send people to notify all the knights in the fief to come here and see me."

"Right now?" Jack Moore asked in surprise.

The convoy had just stopped, and the horses' bridles hadn't even been removed yet. Everyone was still catching their breath. Jack Moore had thought that Miss Charlotte would at least rest for the night before summoning the knights of the fief the next day.

But Charlotte said without hesitation, "Of course, I will invite them to a banquet tonight."

"As you wish." Jack Moore no longer questioned and immediately went to assign tasks to his subordinates.

Charlotte then beckoned to two knights in purple armor standing nearby, calling them over.

Purple was the color of the Melefield family crest. The eighteen knights that Jose Melefield had sent to support Charlotte all wore armor with purple as the main color. The two purple-armored knights Charlotte called over were the two three-winged knights from the group of eighteen, one named Ryan Nazas and the other Jarod Garcia.

"You take some people and clean up the castle, remove the wooden planks from the doors and windows," Charlotte instructed.

"Yes," Ryan Nazas responded without hesitation.

Jarod Garcia, however, clearly glanced in the direction of Harvey Sherwin.

Before setting out, Jarod Garcia and several other accompanying knights had been summoned by Rosie, who had instructed them to take good care of Miss Charlotte and to seek Harvey Sherwin's help or advice if needed.

Although Rosie hadn't explicitly said so, the implication was clear: she wanted these knights to follow Harvey Sherwin's lead and heed his arrangements.

Jarod Garcia had no objections to this, as he hailed from the Sean Camp.

The Sean Camp had been established seven years ago at a place called "Hengqiu" on the border between the Green Plains Duchy and the Kingdom of Gatu. The name and location of the camp made its basic purpose clear.

After Sean Melefield was born, relations between the Green Plains Duchy and the Kingdom of Gatu officially hit rock bottom. The Kingdom of Gatu was the first to amass troops on the border between the two countries. Geographically, if the Kingdom of Gatu wanted to attack the Green Plains Duchy, it would be attacking from a higher position, and the Green Plains Duchy was largely flat, with almost no natural defenses. Therefore, to guard against the Kingdom of Gatu and counter its military threats, Jose Melefield decided to build the Sean Camp on the border between the two countries.

In the end, no war broke out between the Kingdom of Gatu and the Green Plains Duchy, but the Sean Camp was retained.

Because of its mission and the name "Sean," knights from the Sean Camp were generally considered to be part of the Duchess's faction. Rosie and her people indeed had a deep influence on the Sean Camp. Knights like Jarod Garcia, who came from the Sean Camp but had no significant background of their own, usually did not refuse to serve the Duchess.

However, when Jarod Garcia looked over, he saw that Harvey Sherwin was chatting with the blond Robin Mancini and showed no intention of paying any attention to Charlotte and the others.

Since the Earl of Quirk Forest's territory, Harvey Sherwin and that Robin Mancini had been getting along famously. Anyone could see that those two were not exactly proper knights, and their getting along so well was likely due to their similar disreputable natures.

Since Harvey Sherwin showed no interest in managing the situation here, Jarod Garcia could only take it as tacit approval. After all, Rosie had said that they should take good care of Miss Charlotte, so in the absence of Harvey Sherwin's objection, it should be natural for them to follow Charlotte's instructions, right?

"Yes."

Thus, Jarod Garcia also led his subordinates to clean up the castle.

Charlotte then had the accompanying chefs prepare the meat they had bought from the Earl of Quirk Forest's territory for the evening banquet.

The nobles of the Orlan Empire loved to eat meat.

The royal family and the nobles had money, willing to use the best parts of the best ingredients and to spare no expense on spices, so the taste of cooked meat was generally not bad.

However, the problem was that they ate too much.

Take the empire's greatest noble, Emperor Leopold, for example. Last year's Holy Grace Festival, Charlotte also attended the New Year's banquet hosted by the emperor. The banquet was divided into three stages.

In the first stage, servants served the attending nobles venison pies, pork soup, roasted boar's head, roasted loin, roasted swan, roasted goat, and after finishing these, the banquet took a break, with dancers and musicians performing.

Then, the second stage began, with servants serving roasted pork, roasted crane, roasted pheasant, roasted heron, roasted chicken, roasted bream, rabbit pies, and roasted two-year-old rabbit. Then, more song and dance performances.

Next, the third stage began, and this time it wasn't just roasts. The servants served stewed venison, stewed chicken, stewed rabbit, stewed quail, stewed partridge, stewed lark, and so on.

This was not an amount of food that humans could possibly finish.

Rather than saying that the purpose of such banquets was to "eat," it would be more accurate to say it was to "watch food perform." The nobles compared the quantity of dishes at banquets, the skill of the chefs, and the rarity of the ingredients to flaunt their family's wealth and demonstrate the host's generosity.

Sometimes, similar banquets would last for several days, with meat dishes continuously served, interspersed with song and dance performances that were essentially for the nobles to catch their breath between eating.

After attending a few such banquets, Charlotte no longer had much of an appetite for meat, even feeling nauseous at the sight of it. However, when in Rome, if she wanted to host a banquet, not having enough meat would lead to accusations of being "poor and stingy."

After arranging for the attendants to go about their tasks, Charlotte herself took Renee and two guards to tour the surrounding fief.

Not long after setting out on horseback, Charlotte came across a large area of abandoned farmland.

Charlotte dismounted, and due to her poor riding skills, she almost fell, but Renee caught her in time.

"Be careful, miss," Renee reminded her.

"It's fine."

Charlotte didn't care, squatting down to push aside the withered weeds, but she didn't see the stubble that should have been left after the grain was harvested.

"It seems this farmland has been abandoned for a long time," Renee also sensed the seriousness of the problem. It was the season for harvesting wheat and millet, yet there were no signs of harvesting in the fields, indicating that the land had been fallow for at least a year.

"Hmm," Charlotte stood up, clapped her hands, and looked around, finally spotting a figure working on a ridge in the distance.

Charlotte walked over on her own initiative. It was a dark, skinny old man who, upon seeing Charlotte, fell to his knees in fright, his face almost buried in the dirt. Beside him was a worn-out winnowing basket containing some kind of grass that Charlotte didn't recognize, probably some sort of wild vegetable.

"Get up, I want to ask you something," Charlotte said.

The old man lay on the ground trembling, not daring to move.

Charlotte didn't bother to say more and directly asked, "Whose fields are these? Why is no one farming them?"

The old man mumbled a long string of words into the dirt.

Charlotte was completely baffled, not understanding a single word. Finally, a guard who somewhat understood the local dialect translated for Charlotte.

"The fields belong to some knight, and the knight didn't want to farm anymore, so they were abandoned."

That was the gist of it. As for the knight's name, Charlotte didn't get an answer, not knowing whether the old man didn't know or the guard didn't understand.

"Take me to your home," Charlotte then said to the old man.

The old man still just lay on the ground trembling.

Charlotte waved her hand, and the two guards stepped forward, one on each side, to lift the old man.

Under the old man's guidance, Charlotte and her party arrived at his home.

The old man's home was a hut made of wood and thatch, cool in winter and warm in summer, with drafts coming from all sides. Near the old man's home were a few similar huts, which probably constituted a small village.

The village roads were muddy, emitting a lingering stench. Upon seeing Charlotte and her party, the adult villagers knelt directly in the stinking mud. The village children curiously peeked out, boys and girls alike running around naked, skinny but with large bellies.

Charlotte frowned slightly and entered the old man's hut. The hut had no partitions, just one room. On the east side of the room was a bed with straw and a thin, blackened quilt. At the foot of the bed, a small area was fenced off with vines, housing two chickens. On the west side, there was a pile of unburned firewood with a pottery jar next to it, which probably served as the kitchen. In the corner of the "kitchen" were piles of horse, cow, and chicken dung, possibly used as fertilizer or fuel.

Charlotte opened the pottery jar to look inside; it contained a shallow half-jar of wheat bran.

Seeing Charlotte's action, the old man tensed up, clearly concerned about the jar, or rather the wheat bran inside, but he dared not do anything.

Wheat bran is actually the husk of wheat, primarily used as roughage for livestock.

However, Charlotte was not the type of noble who would ask, "Why not eat meat?" She knew that wheat bran was actually the staple food for more than half the world's population, typically the poor commoners, serfs, slaves...

From their diet, they were hardly different from livestock.

Leaving the old man, who was so nervous he almost fainted, Charlotte visited several nearby fields and villages, finding the situation largely the same.

Desolation, hunger, poverty...

On the way back, Charlotte saw a little girl by a ditch with a large area of decay on her lower body, yet she didn't care, digging for small insects in the mud of the ditch to eat.

Charlotte watched silently from her horse as the little girl happily stuffed a wriggling insect into her mouth. After a while, she let out a long sigh and said with a light laugh, "Renee, look, this is my fief."

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